Two recent, related articles announce the details of a $21m investment by growth equity investor Highland Europe in INCOPRO, a leading machine-learning brand and intellectual property protection business that was co-founded by the UK law firm Wiggin. INCOPRO will use the investment for “the development of its Talisman online brand protection technology to help businesses safeguard their brands from counterfeit and piracy threats online” and to expand its operations in China, the US and Europe. The announcement raises interesting questions regarding how US law firms will maintain their competitive edge on the international stage. These are the articles: UK Law Firm Wiggin raises $21m Investment for its AI-driven AP tool (from The Artificial Lawyer) INCOPRO Raises $21m from Highland Europe to Scale Its Online Brand IP Protection Platform (media release) And here are the questions: How can US firms compete with international firms that can raise money through offering…
How Will US Law Firms Compete with International Firms Offering Equity Outside the Legal Profession?
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LawNext Episode 6: Dera Nevin’s ‘Round-the-World Tour of Legal Innovation
It was around the world in 40 days — the legal tech world that is. Earlier this year, Dera Nevin traveled to 19 destinations in 15 countries on six continents over 40 days, meeting with legal hackers and legal entrepreneurs all over the world. The trip, in conjunction with the Global Legal Hackathon, taught her lessons about legal technology and innovation on a global scale, and even taught her something about herself. In this episode of LawNext, Nevin — who is now writing a book (maybe two) about her trip — describes how she came to embark on this trip, her objectives starting out, where she went, what she saw, and what she learned. Perhaps her biggest takeaway was that there are universal themes to the problems legal technologists are tackling and the obstacles they face. Nevin was most recently e-discovery counsel and director of e-discovery services at Proskauer Rose in New York. Before that, she was managing counsel, e-discovery, at the TD…
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Why I Close My Doors For a Conference
After three years of attending the Clio Cloud Conference, the jazzy, New Orleans legal tech conference hosted by leading cloud-based practice management software provider Clio, Billie Tarascio had had it. Not with the conference, but with being the only staffer from the firm she owns, Modern Law, to attend. So last year, she packed everyone up and headed to The Big Easy for what proved to be “one of the best decisions” she ever made. This year, the Modern Law team is doing it again. “You can’t attend every session,” Tarascio explained. “Our employees want to feel like they can make a difference, and they want to feel like they’re growing.” The Clio Cloud Conference features two days of keynote speakers and incredible educational sessions. Combine that with nourishing food and wellness activities, and the conference definitely offers the kind of growth Modern Law’s employees were looking for, particularly the support…
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Resilience Shows in Super Lawyers Selectees
Each attorney has a narrative surround their success. In the most recent issues of Super Lawyers Magazine, our cover subjects show how critical it is for a lawyer to showcase resilience. Whether that's through hardship, representing a difficult case or leading through change, these stories show how top-rated attorneys guide their clients through the highs and lows. Take a look at the stories below to witness the breadth of their abilities. 2018 Northern California Super Lawyers Magazine In 1981, Dale Minami retried history and in 1983, he won. Minami was representing Fred Korematsu, an Oakland resident who was convicted in 1943 for not reporting to a Japanese-American internment camp. Growing up just south of LA, Dale Minami rarely heard his parents speak about the three years they endured at Rohwer, one of 10 locations where the U.S. government incarcerated 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Representing Korematsu, Minami became a voice for the internees by…
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Lessons on the Craft of Scholarly Reading
Chronicle of Higher Education: “Scholarly reading is a craft — one that academics are expected to figure out on our own. After all, it’s just reading. We all know how to do that, right? Yes and no. Scholarly reading remains an obscure, self-taught process of assembling, absorbing, and strategically deploying the writing of others. Digital technology has transformed the research process, making it faster and easier to find sources and to record and retrieve information. Like it or not, we’ve moved beyond card catalogs, stacks of annotated books and articles, and piles of 3×5 cards. What hasn’t changed, however, is the basic way we go about reading scholarly work. In graduate school, we are told to “do the reading” and “know the literature,” in order to understand our field and master a particular corner of it. We do our best to absorb key sources and orient ourselves to the discipline so that we can demonstrate our…
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Paper – Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books?
Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books? Kayvan Kousha, Mike Thelwall (Submitted on 4 Aug 2018) arXiv:1808.01474 [cs.DL] (or arXiv:1808.01474v1 [cs.DL] for this version) “Despite recent evidence that Microsoft Academic is an extensive source of citation counts for journal articles, it is not known if the same is true for academic books. This paper fills this gap by comparing citations to 16,463 books from 2013-2016 in the Book Citation Index (BKCI) against automatically extracted citations from Microsoft Academic and Google Books in 17 fields. About 60% of the BKCI books had records in Microsoft Academic, varying by year and field. Citation counts from Microsoft Academic were 1.5 to 3.6 times higher than from BKCI in nine subject areas across all years for books indexed by both. Microsoft Academic found more citations than BKCI because it indexes more scholarly publications and combines citations to different editions and chapters. In…
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Symantec – Mobile Privacy: What Do Your Apps Know About You?
Just how much personal information are your apps gathering? “And do they really need so much? The average smartphone user these days has between 60 and 90 apps on their device. Most of these apps request some sort of information about you and the device you are using. They may want to know your name, your email address, or your real-world address. But because smartphones are so powerful, they can also get quite a bit more than that, such as your exact location. Some apps will even request access to the device’s camera or microphone. While all of this is done with the user’s consent, you may be surprised at the level of access some apps have to personal data. Did you know that 45 percent of the most popular Android apps and 25 percent of the most popular iOS apps request location tracking, for example? Or that 46 percent of popular Android apps and 25 percent of popular iOS apps request permission to access your device’s camera? Some Android apps even ask…
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National Archives Guides Federal Agencies on Managing Electronic Records
WASHINGTON, August 8, 2018 — “Earlier this week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) held its first forum to discuss management of digital records [via YouTube] moving into the 21st century. As of December, 31, 2022, the agency will no longer accept records in analog or text form. So NARA is proactively providing guidance now on how Federal agencies can best meet the new electronic records management (ERM) requirements of the future…The aim is to have the records in good order when they are eventually transferred to NARA. FERMI, which launched in October 2015, strives to help agencies navigate the vendor marketplace and procure electronic records management tools and services to meet NARA requirements as well as their specific needs. Laurence Brewer, Chief Records Officer of the United States, stands at the podium with a panel discussing management of electronic records….Next, vendors will be working the GSA to provide their…
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CNET – Best DNA Ancestry Testing Kits
CNET: “Home DNA testing has gone from a curiosity to a competitive market in the past decade, with at least a dozen companies now competing with trailblazers such as Ancestry and 23andMe. But before we compare and contrast the available options, let’s take a look at exactly why you’d invest in a DNA testing service — including the upsides and the caveats. Services available – If you’re using a home DNA testing service, you’re likely looking for one of three things: Ancestry and family history: The first big draw of a full DNA test is that you’ll get a detailed breakdown on ancestry and ethnicity, and the migration patterns of your ancestors. Spoiler alert: Your ethnic background may be radically different than you think it is.Relative identification: With your permission, some DNA services will let you connect with relatives you never knew you had — other folks with matching DNA who have…
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Posture
Yesterday, I talked about how some lawyers are afraid of their clients. They bend over backward to give them whatever they want, even if they don’t deserve it, because they’re afraid of losing the client or having them say bad things about them. They try to please everyone, thinking they’ll attract more clients, but all they do is drive clients away. When you’re too eager to please, too available, or too generous, you project an image of neediness. Clients can sense it. When clients see you as needy, they get nervous. It’s like pulling up to a restaurant at 6 pm and seeing an empty parking lot. Nobody wants to eat where nobody else is eating. People want to hire attorneys who don’t need their business. True or not, that’s what you want them to think. Don’t be so quick to give them what they want. Make them wait a day or a week to book an appointment. Have them speak to someone on your staff or fill out a form on your website…
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Paper and interview – Short-Run Pain, Long-Run Gain? Recessions and Technological Transformation
Knowledge@Wharton – interview transcript and podcast: “During the financial crisis of 2008, employment fell dramatically, as was expected. But in the economic recovery that followed, only certain jobs bounced back. A research paper by Wharton finance professor Nikolai Roussanov looks at this phenomenon and correlates it with technological adoption by companies during a down economy. The paper, whose co-authors are Cornell University professor Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel and Wharton doctoral student Alex Kopytov, is titled “Short-Run Pain, Long-Run Gain? Recessions and Technological Transformation.” Roussanov recently sat down with Knowledge@Wharton to explain the scope and goal of the research as well as what they found.” [h/t Marcus Zillman]
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Recent Developments Regarding the California Consumer Privacy Act
This post recaps some recent developments related to the California Consumer Privacy Act (which I’m still calling CCPA despite the IAPP’s effort to brand it CaCPA). The Technical Amendments Bill The technical amendments bill is SB 1121. The bill would do things like change “act” to “title,” “opt out” to “opt-out” and “business'” to “business’s,” so that should give you some sense of its value. For reasons that aren’t clear, the technical amendments bill misses dozens of obvious and outright errors, including most of the ones I flagged in my prior post. Some of the more noteworthy changes: It would strike the surplusage after 1798.100(e). It would add: “The rights afforded to consumers and the obligations imposed on any business under this title shall not be construed to infringe on the business’s speech rights that state or federal courts have recognized as…
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How the Holocaust-Swiss banks deal was brokered
Swissinfo: “It has been 20 years since Swiss banks agreed to compensate Holocaust victims for assets lost during the Second World War. A documentary takes a look at the dormant Swiss bank account scandal. The conflict over Jewish assets in Swiss bank accounts culminated in the 1990s in what would become Switzerland’s largest foreign policy crisis since the Second World War. The following report and embedded videos are from a Swiss documentary, The Meili Story external link. Everything started with Greta Beer. She is 97 today and lives in Boston. Her father was a wealthy textile manufacturer in Germany before the Second World War with bank accounts in Switzerland. After the war, Beer and her mother’s search for their father’s money in Swiss banks was in vain. Her case became public in the 1990s and eventually led Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Chairman of the Banking Commission, to invite her to a hearing in Washington.…
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14% of Americans have changed their mind about an issue because of something they saw on social media
“For most Americans, exposure to different content and ideas on social media has not caused them to change their opinions. But a small share of the public – 14% – say they have changed their views about a political or social issue in the past year because of something they saw on social media, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted May 29-June 11. Although it’s unclear what issues people changed their views about, within the past year a variety of social and political issues – from the #MeToo movement to #BlackLivesMatter and #MAGA – have been discussed on social media. Certain groups, particularly young men, are more likely than others to say they’ve modified their views because of social media. Around three-in-ten men ages 18 to 29 (29%) say their views on a political or social issue changed in the past year due to social media. This is roughly twice the share saying this among all Americans and more than…
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3 Practical Tools To Help Regulators Develop Better Laws And Policies
Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University. 3 Practical Tools To Help Regulators Develop Better Laws And Policies a Policy Paper on Autonomous Vehicles, July 2018. “Regulators and policymakers are driving efforts to deliver the benefits of automated vehicles (AVs) to the public as soon as possible, while minimizing their potential challenges. However, there are still many open questions regarding the best approach to achieving this objective. Key stakeholders—including regulators, policymakers, industry, citizens, and academia—have not yet reached a consensus on the approaches regulators should take in developing robust public policies for the governance of AVs. Understanding the types of regulatory challenges for AVs and using new practical tools or using traditional tools in a different way, would help with this problem of developing better AV policies and regulations. This policy paper analyzes several categories of regulatory challenges surrounding AVs and…
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Preserving Presidential History
Podcast – “The National Archives has been collecting records of the United States since 1934. It holds billions of documents, photographs, and objects that tell the story of our country and our Presidents. White House Historical Association President Stewart McLaurin talks to David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, about the importance of record-keeping, and how presidential libraries tell the story of a president’s time in the White House.”
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Try Outsourcing When You Can’t Clone Yourself
Of the more than 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S., approximately half are solos, according to the American Bar Association. Staffing and managing workflows are challenges that solo attorneys need to constantly juggle. How do you appropriately staff up during busy seasons or big cases? Do you hire a temp through an agency? Outsource to a contract lawyer, team up with another firm, hire a full-time employee … explore artificial intelligence? Recently I faced such a predicament while driving over a mountain range with a looming motion for summary judgment due by midnight. So I opted to hire a freelance lawyer for help. I logged into my account with Lawclerk, posted a project and quickly hired a freelancer. (Full disclosure: I am a co-founder of the company, with two other attorneys.) When I arrived home, the research memo was in my inbox so I could review it, incorporate it into my motion and get it filed before midnight. Instantly, I joined the 57 percent of law firms using…
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Horses and Lawyers: A New Kind of Partnership
I've had several questions over the past couple of days about the horse work that kicks off Day One of the Empowerment Retreat. Here are just a few quick FAQs: Q: Are we going to be riding horses? A: No,...
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5 Ways to Improve Your LinkedIn Summary
The Summary is one of the most overlooked areas of most lawyers’ LinkedIn Profiles, but it can be a great way to add value to your Profile and convey important information to your audience. LinkedIn calls the Summary “your media-enhanced elevator pitch.” Here are five ways to improve your LinkedIn Summary: Write in a conversational tone LinkedIn is a professional networking site. What you do on LinkedIn is an extension of what you do and how you network in real life. Your LinkedIn Profile stands in for you to connect with others – colleagues, potential clients, referral sources, the media, etc. It represents you. When you introduce yourself to people in real life and talk about what you do and who you do it for, you introduce yourself in the first person: “Hi, I’m Jim. I represent entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to protect their brands.” You wouldn’t say, “Jim is an intellectual property lawyer representing…
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Taking Control of Your Firm's Biggest Cost
How well did you do in all those business classes you took in law school? How about the management classes? Did you ace them all and now find that running the business of your law practice is a breeze? Oh...
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